And the winner is ...

31 July 2002 — 10:00am

The winner of our breakaway Dems party competition is Gerry Orkin, for Murray's Darling Party. Peter Woodforde's Left Right Out Party, Sid's The Chippenfails, Richard Howlett's The Fleedom Party, Damian Shaw-Williams' The Liberal Lites and Gregory Jon Steven's The Meg Leaves Party were close behind. For a serious name, I liked Anne Maree Gilles' Sustainable Option Party until my boss Stephen Hutcheon pointed out that made it the SOP. Norbeto's The Independent Progressive Party got our nod for a serious name.

Meg is sorting through her photos now - we'll put the them online as well as sending Gerry the originals.

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Watching Dems and exiled Dems on TV Monday night before the showdown meeting I suddenly saw blood in their mouths. They're cannibalising each other! Even for me, a journo, there's such a thing as too much transparency. Gee I hope they do shut up for a while. This is getting sickening.

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More sickened feelings Tuesday, when I discovered Labor was closing down the children overboard inquiry. My news story and comment piece for smh.com.au follows. I'm off to the Byron Bay Writers Festival tomorrow and a two week holiday, when I'll get get my head around Robert Lawton's demand for a return to serious content. Back August 19.

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Off the hook: inquiry produced 'big fat nothing'

By Margo Kingston

July 31 2002

The four-month Senate inquiry into the children overboard affair - which ended suddenly yesterday without hearing key evidence - has produced "a big fat nothing" because the Opposition gave in to the Government, a Liberal member complained today.

Asked why the Opposition capitulated to the government's refusal to allow key staffers to the Prime Minister and former defence minister Peter Reith to give evidence to the inquiry, a Labor Party source said: "The view is we have got as much as we can from the Government and the process."

But Liberal inquiry member Senator George Brandis said Labor's decision to abandon the inquiry was "pissweak".

"I said openly that we accepted the Senate's legal power to call those witnesses," he told smh.com.au. "We suspect that Labor was fearful that if the evidence was called, there'd be nothing in it. The whole inquiry has turned into a big fat nothing."

Labor has also abandoned its inquiry into an alleged attempt by senior Prime Minister's Department officer Dr Brendon Hammer to tamper with the evidence of defence witness Commander Stefan King, and will excuse Michael Potts, who Hammer says ordered him to meet King about his evidence, from giving evidence.

The wind-up decision comes before the Labor-initiated independent report into the case against Mr Reith, his then staffers Peter Hendy, Ross Hampton and Peter Scrafton, and Mr Howard's foreign affairs adviser Miles Jordana, has reported. When announcing the investigation by Stephen Odgers SC, Labor Senator John Faulkner said it was designed to flush out the men, and that he would not rule out issuing subpoenas forcing them to give evidence.

On SIEV-X, Labor's decision means the defence force will not be tested on shock admissions by Colonel Patrick Gallagher this month that defence intelligence told the then head of Operation Relex, Admiral Geoffrey Smith, that SIEV-X was a confirmed departure on October 20, despite Admiral Smith's evidence that so such confirmation had ever taken place. It also appears that Labor will also capitulate to defence minster Robert Hill's ban on Admiral Raydon Gates, as head of the defence task force formed to help the inquiry, giving evidence on SIEV-X intelligence and the alleged witness tampering.

Defence will also not be tested on Tuesday's evidence by the then head of the Prime Minister's people smuggling task force, Ms Jane Halton, that Defence, Coastwatch and the Immigration Department failed to advise the task force on October 20 that intelligence had confirmed the departure of SIEV-X, that it had 400 people onboard, and was at risk of sinking. The task force was first told on October 23 when its sinking became public knowledge.

Ms Halton expressed surprise at the failure, saying "every alarm bell around the place would have rung" because there was not enough accommodation on Christmas Island for such a large number of arrivals. Admiral Smith refused to intensify or vary surveillance to find SIEV-X after receiving the October 20 intelligence.

Wednesday's hearings are the last in the long-running inquiry, which will report on August 20.

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Labor backdown opens black hole of accountability

By Margo Kingston

August 1 2002

Labor is a shell of a party, sure, but the lack of guts and integrity it's shown in the children overboard inquiry is something else again. Its decision to capitulate to systematic government obstruction rather than do everything in its power to force the main players in the scandal into the witness box is a stain on the Senate and an awful blow to the accountability of government to the people.

Labor Senators have tortured mere public servants for days on end, humiliated powerless bit players and irrevocably harmed brilliant public service careers. In the meantime, the people who know the truth and lied about it, covered it up, and pressured the chief of the navy to mislead the public have senior positions in government and the private sector. Peter Reith is a consultant to a defence firm using his cozy government contacts to best financial advantage.

The Government rewards its protectors - the men who ensure the buck stops nowhere and that the unethical prosper.

Cabinet banned crucial staff advisers to Peter Reith - Peter Scrafton, Peter Hendy and Ross Hampton from giving evidence. Defence Minister Robert Hill went even further, banning a mere public service secretary in Reith's office at the time from giving evidence about the processing of the captions on the notorious photos Reith used to convince the Australian people he had proof of the lie that asylum seekers had thrown children overboard.

When the SIEV-X tragedy hit the inquiry radar, defence minister Robert Hill had the gall to ban the head of the defence force task force formed specifically to assist the inquiry, Admiral Raydon Gates, from giving evidence. Gates had personally reviewed all intelligence reports of the movements and condition of SIEV-X for the inquiry.

Legal advice from the clerk of the senate, Harry Evans, makes it crystal clear the Senate can direct the recalcitrants to give evidence, and subpoena them if necessary. There is also nothing to stop the man whose behaviour is most in question, Peter Reith, from being ordered to appear. Reith, of course, is prepared to go to the High Court if necessary to avoid accountability to the Australian people.

Labor Senate leader John Faulkner was concerned not to create uncomfortable precedents for a future Labor government, and (supposedly) anxious to avoid the possibility that the Courts would water down the Senate's powers to compel witnesses to appear.

He sold his interim plan - to get an independent assessor to compile the case against the men who haven't the guts to account for their actions - as a means to pressure them to appear before considering more drastic action.

But now it's all over, even before the assessor's report has been received. Yesterday's public hearing, according to inquiry Senators and the committee secretariat, was the last, with the report to be handed down on August 20.

Perhaps it's the fact that the politics isn't instantly favourable to Labor - most Australians don't want to know for sure if Howard's government lied to them during the election campaign, and whether the defence force showed callous disregard for the lives of asylum seekers on board SIEV-X.

But this is a matter of much greater moment than short-term public opinion. It is about the integrity of government itself, the limits on lying to win office, and what mechanisms the people, through their parliament, have to enforce integrity in government.

Unless Labor changes its mind, the Government has created precedents which mean future governments can, at whim, ban ministerial staffers, public service secondees to minister's offices - advisory and merely administrative - and members of the defence force from giving evidence. It can even stop public servants being accountable for their actions after they leave minister's offices.

Labor can't be concerned that the Senate's powers might be watered down in any court action. Capitulation is worse than taking that risk - it renders Senate power illusory by default.

Courtesy of Labor, a black hole of accountability has been opened which will swallow future attempts to force the buck to stop somewhere in government. Minister's staffers can order public servants to do anything, keep anything from their ministers, tell their ministers and not have to tell that to the public, in fact destroy any reasonable chance for the public to get near the truth of scandals.

As for SIEV-X, to close down its inquiry into the tragic deaths of 353 asylum seekers without recalling the man whose false evidence on the matter exposed an attitude of callous indifference and sheer incompetence in the defence force's Operation Relex, is a betrayal of the families of the dead. Admiral Geoffrey Smith's evidence has been shot to pieces by later defence witnesses, yet Labor has decided not to call him to account.

Who cares? Certainly not Labor, a cheap and nasty relic of a once great political movement.

Postscript: After confirming the closure of the inquiry yesterday, Labor suddenly hedged its bets late today. Asked for an official comment by smh.com.au, Senator Faulkner backtracked a little late today. "The inquiry has not closed down," he now says. "The committee awaits answers to further questions on notice including email traffic from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet." We'll see.

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Robert Lawton in Adelaide

Somewhere back a few years ago, when Webdiary was Canberra Inside Out, your aim was to examine the issues that the rest of the media didn't cover. The Hansonite material that made Pauline seem like a good idea to thousands of voters. Stringing a few ropes over the chasm between the black rimmed eyewear-sporting, yoga-loving, world-travelling digirati and the Australia's Funniest Home Videos-loving, trackpant wearing, suburban bewilderbeest.

Where did that all go, Margo??

Endless obsessions with refugee boats and (now) the machinations of a few earnest oddballs in Democratland...

The Herald's Alan Ramsey has once again punctured a swollen balloon. On Saturday he classified the latest Meg v Nat farce as "idiot time in politics". And the idiots are in the press gallery as well as in the Dems' offices.

Can we move back to the world where you, and smh.com.au readers, create your/our own news priorities?

Refugees and Telstra are not the only stories. Nor the internal wankery of the ALP and Libs.

Try:

*water wastage and conservation

*universal no-fault insurance and a revival of the Woodhouse Report circa 1974

*prison/corrections reform (including comment on UK Home Secretary David Blunkett's recent white paper on the subject)

*public transport and the slow death of urban rail

*the effort, or lack of, to get new migrants into country centres like Bathurst, Rockhampton, Port Pirie or Horsham

*school education which encourages the application of science to agriculture/horticulture in the peculiar Australian environment...

These are not typical "federal" issues... but neither was sewerage and town planning, and look what they did for Whitlam and Uren in the 70s.

Reading The Guardian recently I am struck by the many and fascinating policy ideas which are coming out, officially or via leakage, from Westminster. And this from an administration apparently obsessed with spin and PR. Is this because so many of the departmental head offices have been decentralised to places like Birmingham and Glasgow, rather than genteel Belconnen or smooth Woden?

Or is it another symptom of the Australian press gallery bunking in with politicians under the Parliament House grass, making of all an innocuous tube of policy toothpaste... and thus adding a lustre to the UK debate which it doesn't deserve??

The UK is of course still a centralised state (despite the trappings of independence for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). Australia is still a federation, with lists of commonwealth as distinct from state powers. But small c conservative governments are in power everywhere around the country, and will remain there for the foreseeable future (even if Boy Brogden manages to beat Bob Carr next year).